Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian; An uncomfortable look at the evils of manifest destiny
I’d like to take the time and tell you a little bit about Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Though the work is perhaps less well known compared to McCarthy’s other works, partly due to movie adaptations of McCarthy’s other works such as The Road and No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian might be his greatest piece. McCarthey spent over six years living in Mexico and learning Spanish; all to provide a tale which takes on that question which is among the most pertinent in American history — how the west was won. Movies from Hollywood’s golden era depict the tall and steadfast lone ranger against the savage, wild natives. History books aim to provide a more impartial, accurate account. In this piece, McCarthy aims for the jugular. The whole book is a godless tapestry of mayhem depicting how the west was won with violence and how man forsake his own soul to do it. The book does not have heros — this time will not allow for it.
“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
The book may be interpreted as a withering criticism of manifest destiny — the goals of a populace to remake America in their own way — an agrarian, civilised and religious country. In Blood Meridian, such destiny can only be realised through the dealing of violence and corruption of the soul.
“…rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”
In this work man is a self-sustaining distributor of suffering. The greater the invention the more blood is spilled. We are the author in a forthcoming cataclysm. McCarthy highlights the perverse nature of manifest destiny with this line from the primary villain in the book.
“It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.”
Believing in one’s birthright to America never had anything to do with religion or superiority of man, it was simply an excuse, a comfortable fallback. The West was won by making genocide more palatable.
